The most recommended circus books

Strange World is a collection of short stories (and many are very short). They expand on the title, the stories being recollections, reports, and (I’m fairly sure) completely made-up weirdness from around the country and world. Everything from strange coincidences to the absurdly fantastic, are all presented as matter-of-fact. This is perfectly in line with the publication date of 1964. Then, America was fully invested in the UFO craze, tinged with metaphysics and the occult. The stores are a time capsule of this cultural view and – whether or not you believe the stories are true – are a fun read.

I read that Noel Streatfeild actually spent time with a travelling circus to achieve authenticity in this story. Well, you can almost smell the greasepaint and sawdust.

Rather than being sent to separate orphanages, sheltered siblings Santa and Peter run away to Cob’s Circus where their Uncle Gus performs on the trapeze. Peter learns to ride and to understand animals, and Santa learns to tumble, but they need to persuade their uncle to like them and decide to keep them. Though old-fashioned, this tale is vivid with colour and spectacle, and the atmosphere so well-captured.

Katherine is a super-talented writer who has written adult books as well.

In this case she brings her amazing skills to bear on a strong mystery with a female protagonist, a grandad, and a bunch of talented circus performer types. Great use of words, complex plot, good resolution, spooky locations.

Who can resist a beautiful, direct, competent, gifted, and feared woman? Victoria is all those things, earning her the title of Queen in the ballet world. Anna is a young, adorable, rambling, dubious ballerina and appears to have the raw talent to be the most talented prima since Victoria.

Interest transforms into attraction, and theirs is hot enough to melt the ice on Rockefeller’s rink. They restrain themselves as long as possible, but the necessity of touching one another for professional purposes quickly turns into more.

Their sexual tension might be as high as the mast on the Empire State Building, but it’s Victoria’s unpredictability and their emerging romance as they learn to trust one another that will make me remember this book long after I’ve closed the cover.

This one's a fast-moving mystery story that takes you behind the scenes of the circus! An insurance investigator, John Nieves, has to determine whether a lion tamer's death was an accident or murder, but the circus people play practical jokes on him, especially after they discover he has a childhood fear of clowns! The big cats feature in this but are well treated and John develops an affinity with a panther who had been refusing to eat. This one has tension, suspense, and a lot of laughs along with the glamour of the circus!

I was lucky enough to read this book when it was still a manuscript. It’s the story of 10-year old Hastin, driven by poverty but also by his impulsiveness and youthful optimism. Running away from home to make money to help his mother and sick sister, Hastin ends up far from his village in India, and in the clutches of a cruel circus owner. He also becomes keeper to a baby elephant, Nandita. As an outsider to the setting of this book, Lynne Kelly dug in, persevered, and did the hard work of writing the story with respect and care. The baby elephant is a pure delight. 

This novel captured my imagination when I first read it in high school, a time when I felt especially isolated. Not only is it a good outsider story, it’s a good come-uppance story (the evil forces get their come-uppance in the end).

When he’s eight years old, Horty Bluett runs away from his abusive adoptive family and his classmates who torment him. Some carnival people, also outcasts, take him in. Horty doesn’t realize until he’s older that he is an alien, grown by alien organisms from another world, and his special power is the ability to duplicate, or “mimic”, other life forms. This talent helps him thwart the sinister carnival owner’s plans and, as an added bonus, exact revenge on his cruel adoptive father, Judge Bluett.

I’ve already confessed my love for mysteries, and about the only thing I like better is period mysteries. Willowjean Parker, the former circus performer, finds herself working as the partner to famous detective Lillian Pentecost in 1940s New York.

The two take on the case of a rich widow found dead after her fancy Halloween party—in the same place her husband took his own life a year earlier. Vengeful spirits, or something more…human?

Stephen Spotswood captures the feel of the era, from the newshounds to the society pages and crafts compelling characters that you’ll want to keep coming back to—trust me, I’ve read both sequels and am avidly anticipating the third!

This book is such an excellent and innovative example of an interdisciplinary approach to animal history. Susan Nance blends current scientific thinking about the welfare, agency, and cognition of elephants with a detailed and highly engaging look at the role of these animals in circus history. This is a wonderful model of how to write animal history, an endeavor that isn’t always that straightforward because archival records tend to focus on human lives, deaths, and achievements.

Angela Carter is famous for her sumptuous language, structural playfulness, genre-bending, and seductive, logic-defying plots – and if you like gorgeous lyricism, unforgettable characters, and magical realism (emphasis on the magical), you’ll fall in love with Nights at the Circus. In 1899, journalist Jack Walser meets six-foot-two circus aerialist Fevvers, “the Cockney Venus”. Raised in a brothel and a graduate of freak shows, she’s now a star of the Victorian stage – but are her wings real, as she claims? Walser becomes part of the circus in body and spirit, as, disguised as a clown, he follows Fevvers to St Petersburg and into the wilds of Siberia, where Fevvers must draw on all her cunning and strength to survive – let alone save Walser, too.